Snapper in the road

This is a Barry Moser illustration from Brer Rabbit of Brer Terrapin

This work is published under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5 License.

It reminded me of a story I wanted to tell. Last sunny Saturday we were driving down 5&10 in Northfield and saw a dinner-plate sized snapping turtle crossing the wide hot road. Rob stopped the car with the turtle in front of us and I hopped out. Rob was yelling, "It's a snapper! Don't touch it! I just saw something on Discovery; they have really long necks! Don't touch it!" I had no intention of touching it! I was going to soothe it along and be a chaperone. (As a labor and delivery nurse I always think that's what everyone needs.) But the turtle froze when I stepped out of the car. Cars were whizzing by in both directions. Rob was telling me to do something and I didn't know what to do. The girls were in the back of the car watching with worried interest. I realized that the turtle could still be smashed by some truck pulling up to pass us and they would have to watch it crack and ooze. Horrible. We were stuck.

I started to wave the traffic past us and the turtle just sat there, all of us watching it. Then from a small cross street came a most unlikely heroine. She was getting out of a big SUV with North Carolina plates. Young, 20's, plump and made up, with a tube top that she had to hike up by every few steps. She walked up behind the turtle in her jeweled flip flops.

I asked, incredulous, "Have you come to help?"

She nodded, hiked up the tube top and leaned over the turtle. "Yeah, we had to turn the car around. I'm so glad she didn't get hit. We used to raise turtles."

Her mother was standing on the side of the road, lots of gold jewelry and gold rimmed sunglasses. The young woman seemd so confident, I didn't know if I should tell her it was a snapper. She mumbled to me and to herself, "It's a water turtle so I can't pick her up or she'll bite me." Then she sort of touched the back of the shell of the grimy silent turtle and it started to walk at a nice clip , then it stopped and she touched it again, standing over it and hiking up her shirt again each time she had to take a step. I stood out in the road and stopped traffic, she scurried it along in it's goofy gait. A line of cars and trucks waited for only a minute and she was across, the turtle lumbering into the gully on the side of the road, to go lay eggs near the water, maybe. Once it was off the road her mother ran to catch up saying in a high sing song voice to the large moving rock that was the turtle, "Hey sweetie, there you go, it's so nice to see you." I realized she has held back because she knew turtles and knew she would have confused it. They waved a thank you to me. I said," Bless you for coming to save the day!" and got back in the car. I was flooded with sweet relief. The children were filled with questions about the mysterious turtle-whisperers. Really, what are the chances that a pair of dolled up turtle breeders will show up when you need them? I decided to believe in angels, people who show up at just the right time and love snappy slimy turtles and gently convince them to cross the road to safety.